Water savings won't be enough

Aggressive conservation has slashed water consumption in Long Beach by 1.6 billion gallons in the past year, dropping usage to a 10-year low, officials said Tuesday.

Yet despite the success, further conservation efforts are needed to offset rising water rates and a steep decline in water supplies from a key Northern California source, experts say.

"We need people to understand that we no longer have enough water going forward to even meet normal demand," said Ryan Alsop, government and public affairs director for the Long Beach Water Department.

"There needs to be a paradigm shift in our relationship with water ... not only in Long Beach, but everywhere in the region."

The city and region's looming dilemma - brought about by years of drought, a growing population and dwindling supply - was the subject of much debate among a few dozen of the state's top water management experts in Long Beach on Tuesday.

The group met at a conference hosted by the Aquarium of the Pacific titled "Priming the Pump."

Southern California's longtime dependence on outside water supplies has grown increasingly unpredictable since an August 2007 federal court ruling cut water imports by 30 percent to 18 million people in the lower half of the state.

The ruling requires agencies to stop pumping water from a large swath of the San Joaquin Delta between December and June of each year to protect endangered fish species.

Before the ruling, about 30percent of Long Beach's total water supply came from the delta, Alsop said.

Within weeks of the ruling, the city embarked on an aggressive - and sometimes quirky - campaign to promote water conservation among homes, businesses and government agencies.

By early 2008, water consumption had dropped dramatically, easing the city's sudden water deficit and helping keep costs down as authorities searched for alternate supplies.

"Our (campaign) goal is to make wasting water as socially unacceptable as lighting up a cigarette in a crowded room full of people," Alsop said. "It's been working so far, and I think it's put Long Beach way ahead of most every other city in the region, where conservation efforts have not been a big priority."

Alsop said that although the water department increased water and sewer rates 15.8 percent beginning Oct. 1, further conservation will help minimize future rate hikes.

"We purchase water on a (tiered rate), so the less we buy from wholesale agencies like (Metropolitan Water District), the less we pay per acre-foot," Alsop said.

An acre-foot of water equals 325,000 gallons. The average person uses about 37,000 gallons annually.

Charles Keine, an executive with the California Department of Water Resources, said state and local agencies need to improve water storage capabilities and repair or rebuild an ailing network of dams, levees and pipelines connecting the city's water sources to its cities and farms.

And Long Beach was praised for its research into seawater desalination, a process by which ocean water is converted into clean drinking water.

The city is currently working with the federal government to test new filtration and delivery systems at an East Long Beach site that may eventually produce 300,000 gallons each day.

"Desalination taps into an inexhaustible supply of water and is a proven technology," Keine said.

He argued that high costs associated with desalination, which have prevented widespread investment to date, should decline 10-15 percent in coming years.